Recovery of severely declining resource stocks often leads to enforced quotas or reduced human access to those resources. Predators, however, do not recognize such restrictions and may be attracted to areas of increased prey abundances where human extraction is being limited. Such targeting by predators may reduce or retard the potential recovery of depressed stocks. In the San Juan Islands, northern Puget Sound, USA, marine reserves were implemented to recover depressed fish populations. We examine the role of harbor seals Phoca vitulina in the San Juan Islands food web. We describe the temporal and spatial variability in their diet, emphasizing species for which reserves were established (rockfish Sebastes spp.) and other important depressed stocks, including salmon Oncorhynchus spp. and Pacific herring Clupea pallasii. During winter and spring, seals primarily consumed Pacific herring, Pacific sand lance Ammodytes hexapterus, northern anchovy Engraulis mordax, and walleye pollock Theragra chalcogramma. During summer/fall, adult salmonids composed > 50% of the diet and were particularly important in oddnumbered calendar years, when pink salmon O. gorbuscha spawn. Rockfish were not a primary prey species at any time of the year, suggesting that the abundance of alternative prey species may reduce predation pressure and provide a critical buffer to rockfish predation. The importance of considering increased visitation by marine predators to areas where potential prey are enhanced through restrictions on human extractions should be considered when modeling the efficacy of quotas and reduced access areas, such as marine reserves.

Unbiased estimates of mountain goat (Oreamnos americanus) populations are key to meeting diverse harvest management and conservation objectives. We developed logistic regression models of factors influencing sightability of mountain goat groups during helicopter surveys throughout the Cascades and Olympic Ranges in western Washington during summers, 2004–2007. We conducted 205 trials of the ability of aerial survey crews to detect groups of mountain goats whose presence was known based on simultaneous direct observation from the ground (n = 84), Global Positioning System (GPS) telemetry (n = 115), or both (n = 6). Aerial survey crews detected 77% and 79% of all groups known to be present based on ground observers and GPS collars, respectively. The best models indicated that sightability of mountain goat groups was a function of the number of mountain goats in a group, presence of terrain obstruction, and extent of overstory vegetation. Aerial counts of mountain goats within groups did not differ greatly from known group sizes, indicating that under‐counting bias within detected groups of mountain goats was small. We applied Horvitz‐Thompson‐like sightability adjustments to 1,139 groups of mountain goats observed in the Cascade and Olympic ranges, Washington, USA, from 2004 to 2007. Estimated mean sightability of individual animals was 85% but ranged 0.75–0.91 in areas with low and high sightability, respectively. Simulations of mountain goat surveys indicated that precision of population estimates adjusted for sightability biases increased with population size and number of replicate surveys, providing general guidance for the design of future surveys. Because survey conditions, group sizes, and habitat occupied by goats vary among surveys, we recommend using sightability correction methods to decrease bias in population estimates from aerial surveys of mountain goats.

a b s t r a c tWe consider problems in finite-sample inference with two-step, monotone incomplete data drawn from N d (µ, ), a multivariate normal population with mean µ and covariance matrix . We derive a stochastic representation for the exact distribution of µ, the maximum likelihood estimator of µ. We obtain ellipsoidal confidence regions for µ through T 2 , a generalization of Hotelling's statistic. We derive the asymptotic distribution of, and probability inequalities for, T 2 under various assumptions on the sizes of the complete and incomplete samples. Further, we establish an upper bound for the supremum distance between the probability density functions of µ and µ, a normal approximation to µ.

Blood and fecal samples collected from 97 free-ranging mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus), from four distinct herds during the spring of 2000 or 2001 in eastern Washington, US, were tested for exposure to selected pathogens, concentrations of trace elements, and presence of parasites in feces. Antibodies were detected to the following: Leptospira interrogans serovar Bratislava (4%), Leptospira interrogans serovar Canicola (1%), Leptospira interrogans serovar Grippotyphosa (13%), Bovine viral diarrhea virus 1 (57%), Bovine respiratory syncytial virus (71%), Infectious bovine rhinotracheitis virus (51%), Bovine parainfluenza virus 3 (61%), Bluetongue virus (25%), and Epizootic hemorrhagic disease virus (25%); 3 of 63 (5%) samples had antibody to Neospora spp. All samples tested for antibody to Brucella abortus and L. interrogans serovar Icterohaemorrhagiae, L. interrogans serovar Pomona, and L. interrogans serovar Hardjo samples were negative. Trace element concentrations from 97 sera were deficient for selenium (17%), copper (19%), iron (34%), calcium (3%), and phosphorus (2%) compared with thresholds established for domestic livestock. Parasites detected in 97 fecal samples included dorsal-spined larvae (probably Parelaphostrongylus sp.) (40%), abomasal nematode eggs (1%), Capillaria sp. eggs (1%), Nematodirus sp. eggs (26%), Moniezia sp. eggs (1%), and Eimeria sp. (2%).

We examined the effects of hatchery rearing on FL, weight, egg size, fecundity, relative fecundity, and reproductive mass of female spring Chinook Salmon Oncorhynchus tshawytscha from a population that had been in captivity for 0 (natural‐origin), 18 (hatchery‐origin), and 48 (captive‐reared broodstock) months. Age‐4 captive‐reared broodstock females that were reared for their entire life in the hatchery environment had significantly lower mean FL, weight, fecundity, relative fecundity, and reproductive mass, but had significantly larger eggs than age‐4 females from the other groups after correcting for body size. Hatchery‐origin females had significantly lower fecundity than natural‐origin fish. Our findings illustrate a phenomenon of lower overall reproductive potential for hatchery‐reared fish in the form of reduced fecundity that decreases as time spent in the hatchery environment increases. We also observed that progeny of captive‐reared broodstock parents, released as smolts and recaptured as returning age‐4 adults, have a size and fecundity distribution that is similar to the hatchery‐origin adults, suggesting that the decrease in fecundity was not a genetically linked trait.

Abstract:In Washington State, USA, mountain goats (Oreamnos americanus) have experienced a long-term population decline. To assist management, we created annual and seasonal (summer and winter) habitat models based on 2 years of data collected from 38 GPS-collared (GPS plus collar v6, Vectronic-Aerospace GmbH, Berlin, Germany) mountain goats in the western Cascades. To address GPS bias of position acquisition, we evaluated habitat and physiographic effects on GPS collar performance at 543 sites in the Cascades. In the western Cascades, total vegetation cover and the quadratic mean diameter of trees were shown to effect GPS performance. In the eastern Cascades, aspect and total vegetation cover were found to influence GPS performance. To evaluate the influence of bias correction on the analysis of habitat selection, we created resource selection functions with and without bias correction for mountain goats in the western Cascades. We examined how well the resultant habitat models performed with reserved data (25% of fixes from 38 study animals) and with data from 9 other GPS-collared mountain goats that were both temporally and spatially independent. The statistical properties of our GPS bias correction model were similar to those previously reported explaining between 20 and 30% of the variation, however, application of bias correction improved the accuracy of the mountain goat habitat model by only 1-2% on average and did not alter parameter estimates in a meaningful, or consistent manner. Despite statistical limitations, our habitat models, most OPEN ACCESSRemote Sens. 2011, 3 436 notably during the winter, provided the widest extent and most detailed models of the distribution of mountain goat habitat in the Cascades yet developed.

a b s t r a c tWe continue our recent work on inference with two-step, monotone incomplete data from a multivariate normal population with mean µ and covariance matrix Σ. Under the assumption that Σ is block-diagonal when partitioned according to the two-step pattern, we derive the distributions of the diagonal blocks ofΣ and of the estimated regression matrix,Σ 12Σ −1 22 . We representΣ in terms of independent matrices; derive its exact distribution, thereby generalizing the Wishart distribution to the setting of monotone incomplete data; and obtain saddlepoint approximations for the distributions ofΣ and its partial Iwasawa coordinates. We prove the unbiasedness of a modified likelihood ratio criterion for testing H 0 : Σ = Σ 0 , where Σ 0 is a given matrix, and obtain the null and nonnull distributions of the test statistic. In testing H 0 : (µ, Σ) = (µ 0 , Σ 0 ), where µ 0 and Σ 0 are given, we prove that the likelihood ratio criterion is unbiased and obtain its null and non-null distributions. For the sphericity test, H 0 : Σ ∝ I p+q , we obtain the null distribution of the likelihood ratio criterion. In testing H 0 : Σ 12 = 0 we show that a modified locally most powerful invariant statistic has the same distribution as a Bartlett-Pillai-Nanda trace statistic in multivariate analysis of variance.

Conversion of extensive shrubsteppe communities to cropland has greatly reduced the habitat available to grassland-and sagebrush-obligate birds in the Intermountain West of the United States. In Washington State, approximately 600,000 ha of converted farmland have been planted to perennial grasses, forbs, and shrubs under the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), currently the largest-scale effort creating perennial grassland habitat in this region. From 2003 to 2005 we sampled breeding birds and vegetation characteristics on 48 study sites in CRP and in native shrubsteppe. We used generalized linear models to examine characteristics associated with avian abundance and reproductive success. Abundance of shrubland and grassland birds was more closely associated with site vegetation than either management (planting of native vs. exotic grasses) or landscape factors, with cover of shrubs the dominant variable both for shrubland (positive effect) and for grassland (negative effect) birds. Daily survival rate of 1,377 nests in CRP was equal to or greater than that for nests in shrubsteppe and was similar for CRP planted with native versus exotic grasses. Seasonal reproductive success (young/breeding pair) of 2 focal species-Brewer's sparrow (Spizella breweri; n ¼ 81 pairs) and Savannah sparrow (Passerculus sandwichensis; n ¼ 58)-also was similar between CRP and native shrubsteppe. The CRP has the potential to significantly increase habitat available to shrubland and grassland birds in the Intermountain West and to increase local populations. Because shrubs take significantly longer than herbaceous plants to achieve a size beneficial to birds, CRP grasslands with a well-developed sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) component should be viewed as a long-term investment. Ó 2015 The Wildlife Society.